Winnemem Wintu band meets with BIA; not all Winnemem invited

Members of the Winnemem Wintu met Wednesday with U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs officials in a renewed effort to gain federal recognition.

But the group, led by Chief Caleen Sisk, that met with BIA officials excludes hundreds of other Winnemem in the north state.

"It was quite a positive meeting," said Gary Hayward Slaughter Mulcahy, government liaison for the group. "They (the BIA) acknowledged that we have some serious claims."

Mulcahy acknowledged the group, which has about 125 members, still has a long way to go before receiving federal recognition.

But while members of Sisk's group said they felt good about the meeting with BIA officials, Gloria Gomes, who represents another faction of Wintu, said she was not invited to the meeting.

Gomes is chairwoman of the United Tribe of Northern California Inc., which is separate from Sisk's group.

Gomes said the United Tribe and another Wintu group, the Wintu Tribe of Northern California, represent about 1,000 Wintu and about half of them are Winnemem.

Before Shasta Dam was built, the Winnemem were based in the McCloud River region. But the creation of Lake Shasta inundated much of their ancestral land.

The most recent efforts Wednesday to get federal recognition would not benefit the hundreds of other Winnemem from the other two organizations, Mulcahy said.

Gomes said the other Winnemem and other Wintu need to be recognized also.

Sisk's group recently gained international publicity from its efforts to

have the U.S. Forest Service close off a portion of Lake Shasta during a coming-of-age ceremony.

Gomes said she is concerned most people don't even know there are other Winnemem not connected with Sisk's group living in the area and that they belong to other tribal factions.

The three Wintu groups are all working separately to obtain federal recognition, Gomes said, but they need to work together, if they want to be successful.

Mulcahy, who was at Wednesday's meeting, said if Sisk's Winnemem tribe obtains federal recognition, it would benefit the other two groups.

"They wouldn't be included on ours, but it would open the door for them," he said.

Mulcahy said his tribe's efforts to be recognized were on the back burner until the forest service cited the band's lack of recognition as a reason it could not close the lake during the ceremony.

The forest service ultimately closed a portion of the McCloud arm of the lake for the four-day ceremony that ended July 3, but it did not close a campground and shoreline areas near where the ceremony was held.

Virgil Akins, the BIA's agency superintendent in Redding, said Wednesday he requested more documents from Sisk's group and promised to assist the tribe during the recognition process.

"Hopefully, this meeting today is the beginning of the end" of them not being recognized by the federal government, Akins said.

After the meeting, Sisk and her nephew, Arron Sisk, went out to eat. The two had fasted since June 18 because the BIA would not intervene on the tribe's behalf to get the lake closed. They decided to call off the fast if they got to meet with Akins, Mulcahy said.

Even though the meeting was positive, Mulcahy said the tribe likely still has a long way to go before getting recognition.

"This is going to be such a long process, so who knows what is going to happen in the end," Mulcahy said.